


More Than Words

by JulyStorms



Series: Before Colors Broke into Shades [45]
Category: Shingeki no Kyojin | Attack on Titan
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-11-17
Updated: 2015-11-17
Packaged: 2018-05-02 03:04:51
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,082
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5231480
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/JulyStorms/pseuds/JulyStorms
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>That was the end to the story that Jean and the others knew, because they knew only what he was willing to tell. The rest went like this:</p>
            </blockquote>





	More Than Words

**Author's Note:**

  * For [sirimiri](https://archiveofourown.org/users/sirimiri/gifts).



> Requested by Redstringraven on Tumblr.
> 
> 22\. "The way you said 'I love you'...muffled, from the other side of the door."

They thought he was stupid, but they only had part of the story. Part of the story was all that Marlowe could tell; he didn’t feel right saying the rest. He didn’t even feel right thinking about it, though he did—had thought about it every single stupid day.

There was the fight, of course, but that was not where the story had ended. They had argued. Hitch was unreasonable. He had never seen her in such a state before, and could not understand it. There was enough distance between them, now, that he felt better able to pick the scene apart bit by bit, but his analysis didn’t change the facts: she had spoken selfishly.

In return, he had been cruel, though he hadn’t meant to sound that way.

“You’re not the person I thought you were.”

It was not a statement, but an accusation born of his own hurt feelings that after everything they’d been through together, she did not understand him better.

That was the end to the story that Jean and the others knew, because they knew only what he was willing to tell.

The rest went like this:

She trailed off as if hearing him belatedly, and took in a great, shuddering breath. He had heard her cry before, of course, drunk and in the wrong corridor at HQ and worried about Annie. This was different—worse, somehow. There were tears, and they were falling quite against her own will. He could tell that much, at least. But she didn’t try to wipe them away. She kept trying to talk, opening her mouth and then closing it again without saying a word, hands gesturing as if to lecture him.

He left, having taken the strategical advantage: the high ground.

For a time, he felt like he had won. It didn’t last long. An hour, perhaps. Then the feeling melted away and he wondered at her tears, and the lines in her forehead, and the way her hands moved. He wondered what the words were that she hadn’t been able to say.

He wondered if she was still crying.

But he stopped himself from going too far down that trail of thought; it didn’t matter. None of it mattered. She had said quite enough, and those words spoke as well as any of the rest of them might have. What was she trying to do, anyway? Take back what she had said? Things were not so easy; once spoken aloud, words could not be taken back.

Marlowe knew that—had lived it all his life.

He would never dare to say anything he didn’t believe with every fiber of his being, and expected the same of other people. That was why Hitch’s low opinion of him, of what she thought would keep him in the Military Police, hurt. That was why he had hurt her, too. She wasn’t who he thought she was—not if she understood him so poorly. He hated that he’d started to really care about her, had believed her clever and smart, had found her conversation engaging and entertaining, and had thought her teasing endearing and her face pretty.

That he had been wrong about her hurt, though he couldn’t bear to say as much to her. She wouldn’t understand. She may even laugh at him for being so stupid.

But she had still cried, and he wasn’t sure why she should be the one crying when what had come crashing down was his high opinion of her.

Used to speaking to one another consistently throughout the day, the week that remained until Marlowe was set to ship out to the Survey Corps felt endless. He switched shifts twice with Boris to avoid working with Hitch, and she avoided him likewise, though he did catch her watching him on occasion across the mess hall. He almost felt bad because she was sitting alone, but so was he—and it would be ridiculous to feel bad for someone that had, metaphorically speaking, of course, dug her own grave.

The night before he was set to leave, Boris was out on a patrol shift, and Marlowe spent the time packing his things until everything he owned was neatly pressed into a trunk and a bag. He was the only one leaving the Stohess HQ. He blew out the candle beside his bed at a reasonable hour and pulled the blankets up to his chin.

A few minutes later was when he heard it: a knock at the door, so soft as to almost be mistaken for a loose gutter at the side of the building, bending against the bricking in a light breeze.

“Marlowe?”

It was Hitch. He knew it was. He knew it was and he didn’t really want to speak to her—didn’t want to hear her clumsy apology just so that she could be forgiven because he was shipping out to the front lines to fight with the Survey Corps. It was selfish reasoning and he wanted no part of it.

She ought to apologize because she was wrong, because she had hurt him—not because she didn’t want him to die without forgiving her.

She tried again, this time slightly louder in her knocking, though her voice remained at the same volume. “Marlowe?”

The third time she tried, a few minutes later, she did not knock. “Marlowe, please. I want to talk to you.”

There was a desperate edge to her voice that almost pushed him from his bed and made him answer the door. But, he thought, if she really wanted to talk to him, she would start off by telling him she was sorry.

The room fell silent again, and for such a long time that he thought her long-gone and managed to get halfway to sleep. But then he heard her voice again, trembling slightly. “Marlowe?”

He didn’t know what to make of it, suddenly, and blamed the fact that he was nervous about joining the Survey Corps and tired besides.

“I just—I wanted to say—”

He waited, fingers curling into his blankets, anticipating a coming apology. He would have to answer the door if she apologized. He would have to.

But she didn’t.

She said, voice muffled by the door between them: “I love you.” And she said it in such a way that he was almost able to believe it, slow and careful and considering. A full minute, and then two, passed. Then he heard her boots against the floor, a very faint sound—as if, for the first time in her life, she was treading carefully.

_She doesn’t, though_ , he thought to himself. _She doesn’t_.

He couldn’t sleep after that. Couldn’t sleep because he couldn’t stop thinking about it. About how she had cried at the beginning of the week during their argument. And about how she had almost been crying a moment ago in the corridor, waiting out there for—what? A half-hour?—to tell him that she loved him.

Perhaps it was just another ploy to get him to stay in the Military Police, since nothing else had worked, but wasn’t that too conniving, even for her? It was almost an evil thing to do, he thought.

He’d rather believe she really loved him than think that she would strike back at him in such a way.

But he couldn’t believe it.

Couldn’t believe much of anything except what he knew was safe, and his goals and his dreams, which had shifted and changed in recent months, were the only things he knew for certain were worthy of that kind of faith. It didn’t matter what Hitch said or did, now: he would leave for the Survey Corps at dawn.

And he did, had his things waiting outside of HQ for the stagecoach. It was the fastest way there, and the cheapest. It felt weird to be standing there in civilian clothes in the early morning air. He had grown used to the uniform.

The stagecoach was coming around the corner, the four horses at the front moving steadily at a brisk walk. He leaned down to take the handle of his bag, and that was when Hitch appeared.

She was disheveled and was still dressed for bed, wearing thin shorts and a tank top as if it were still the middle of the summer. She hadn’t slept at all, if the dark circles under her eyes were any indication. Her feet were bare, and she was breathing as if she’d run all the way from her room.

She was going to get in trouble for it. She’d never get back inside the building without an officer stopping her.

“Marlowe,” she said, voice catching as the stagecoach driver pulled back on the reins and the horses tossed their heads as they slowed and then came to a stop.

Was she going to say it again, this time out in public?

She hugged her arms close to her chest and shifted from one foot to the other as if nervous.

“Marlowe, I—”

“Hitch,” he said tonelessly. “Don’t.”

She swallowed hard. “I just—I wanted to say goodbye.”

She held out her hand.

He took it as the driver jumped down to help the messenger guard move Marlowe’s trunk to the top. Her hand felt as it always had, small and nice, but this time it was trembling. He wished that she would apologize, but it was harder than he thought it would be to be angry with her when they were about to part ways—possibly forever. His left hand joined his right, and held her one hand between both of his.

“Goodbye, Hitch,” he said.

He mentioned nothing of what she’d said the night before, and neither did she.

He left her standing by the road hugging herself, though whether it was for comfort or to protect her modesty he wasn’t sure.

Marlowe didn’t what to think about any of it, but he knew that the others would want to know about Hitch, and so spent much of the long stagecoach ride trying to figure out what to say. None of it was their business, but they would ask, and if he chose not to respond, it would be an open invitation to make their own assumptions, and that he was unwilling to endure.

So he would tell the truth—as little of it as he could, but enough that it would make sense that she was not with him, nor he with her.

That they thought he was stupid when he did tell them was interesting. They didn’t have the entire story—or even half of it. What was almost laughable was that they thought the story was _that_ simple, that Hitch’s words were well-meaning and he was a dunce for thinking her cruel.

Perhaps he was.

What was it that he himself felt for her beyond overwhelming disappointment that she did not know him as well as he expected her to?

But, he thought as he laid in bed that night, things were more complicated than just that, than just one argument where she had said hateful things, proving she misunderstood him terribly. She had said that she loved him, but how could she love him when she didn’t understand him? Was what she loved only a figment of her imagination?

Yet after everything, she had rushed out at dawn to tell him goodbye. Barefoot and in the cold.

Marlowe decided not to speak another word of it to Jean or Armin or the others. They could think that he was an idiot for a while longer. Hitch’s capacity for caring as it related to him was none of their business, anyway. It was hers, and perhaps a little bit his, but never theirs.

Her actions did not speak louder than her words; rather, in this instance, her actions amplified some words and drowned out others. He wondered if it was wise to think so deeply about it, to dare to hope that she cared but was as poor at showing it for him as she had been about showing it for Annie. He wished, for a fleeting moment, that he had thought to try to pry the answer out of her before he had left, but it was too late for that, now. He could only run on assumptions and educated guesses: poor substitutes for the truth.

A letter would have to suffice. He wondered if she would answer it.


End file.
